"Kay says that some gadgets with superficial Dynabook-like qualities, such as the iPad, have not only failed to realize the Dynabook dream, but have in some senses betrayed it. That's one of the points he makes in this interview, conducted by computer historian David Greelish, proprietor of the Classic Computing Blog and organizer of this month's Vintage Computer Festival Southeast in Atlanta (the Festival will feature a pop-up Apple museum featuring Xerox's groundbreaking Alto workstation, which Kay worked on, as well as devices which deeply reflected his influence, including the Lisa, the original Macintosh and the Newton). Kay and Greelish also discuss Kay's experiences at some of the big outfits where he's worked, including Xerox's fabled PARC labs, Apple, Disney and HP. Today, Kay continues his research about children and technology at his own organization, the Viewpoints Research Institute." A great interview with this legendary man.

"And PC technology is rife with contrived complexity and utterly unsafe by design."

That sounds like an overgeneralization, the linux + repository model has been used successfully on desktops long before the model was used in mobile. But, linux, unlike say an ipad, gives the user the option to install from sources outside of the repository. It's a great hybrid model incorporating the best of both worlds.

"If geeks and FOSS types honestly cared about ordinary users, they'd be building them a genuine consumer OS unencumbered by either corporate or geek self-interest"

Say, have you heard of linux? The biggest obstacle by far is overcoming the defacto monopoly held by microsoft.

"But I think the ugly truth is that too many geeks like having the old status-quo, a preening elite sitting atop a vast contrived mountain of techno-crap smugly looking down on all the hapless lusers below them with their malware-riddled PCs and neverending struggles with baroque, arcane desktop applications, casual data loss, and all the other long-established brain-dead faults of that half-baked platform."

I assume your talking about windows. I'm honestly not a big fan of windows, but if we're being honest the malware situation is improving there too. I haven't been affected by windows malware in recent years, not anywhere like it used to be. It used to be that windows could get infected just by leaving it on.

"To be blunt, I cannot help wondering just how much of the concern is over users trading some abstract 'freedom' for concrete safety and productivity, and how much is just butt-hurt spite that common users are no longer willing to play the game by the geeks' own rigged rules?"

It is genuinely a concern for freedom, both ours and normal users. My opinion may not be worth much to you, but it's not a lie.

"Personally I hope for a future where the vast majority of ordinary users have their day-to-day computing activities met by a safe, curated platform optimized to their particular needs, and the only folk left using PCs are those that genuinely need them."

This tells me that you don't have experience with linux, because that's exactly how the linux app repo's work on the desktop. You choose what you want installed from the repo's, and the system installs everything automatically and safely.

Edit: Haha, it looks like I'm trying to sell you on linux, but actually I only mention it over and over again because it's a perfect counter example to each of your claims.